How to Tell the Living from the Dead
by drinktea
Summary: He smells, hears, tastes, sees and touches. He remembers them because they're gone and he's still here.  Hope/Light if you squint.


**A/n: **I wrote this nearly right after seeing the _New Adventures _trailer for XIII-2. The Hope I'd envisioned in my other story _After Fall_ is disappointingly more emotionally healthy than the Hope we see in the trailer. It hurts to see that after ten years he still can't accept that they're gone. All that said, thank you for checking out this oneshot, and please leave your thoughts.

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><p>1. ROSES<p>

Back on Coccoon, his mother had kept a rose garden. It started small but quickly became fantastic, something out of a dream. It was the envy of their neighbours, an explosion of vibrant colour, healthy silken buds protruding from between thorns. They had orange, yellow, red, white, pink. The roses attracted butterflies of all varieties, and he knew he'd batted away more than his fair share of the bugs from his hair, lying in the grass outside. He remembered flecks of white - eggshells - mixed in with the soil. Out of every detail of that garden though, what he remembered most strongly was the smell. It was fresh, floral, heady in how it clung to your clothes and stayed on your skin. This was the smell he'd associated with home. (Home smelt like test tubes now, like starched lab coats and the acrid tang of chemicals.)

He'd read somewhere that smell was the sense linked most closely to memory. Something about how the olfactory bulb was located close to the part of the brain - hippocampus was the name - that controlled short and long term memory. Well, his olfactory bulb worked splendidly, and so did his hippocampus. He knew because the first time he smelt that aroma after his mother died, he was instantly at home again. Sunlight was falling through the air, illuminating dust motes, the lawn was spongy beneath him, and phantom butterflies fluttered above.

Then he opened his eyes and realized that scent was wafting down to him from the scary lady with the gunblade. Light looked down at him not unkindly. He had backed into her legs. They were smooth, like the rose petals. His hippocampus started forming new memories, from that first day to their last together. The feel of her watching his back. The importance he felt in receiving her knife. That smell...

In his kitchen stood a vase and in that vase stood roses. The peach tint of them popped against his utilitarian appliances. They were a poor substitute for his mother's garden and their scent was nothing next to Light's. But somedays he needed this crutch.

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><p>2. FIREWORKS<p>

It was late evening, and the beach was really starting to liven up. Some cars had been driven right up to the sand, and people perched on the rooves, blasting top forty hits from their radios. There was chatter about the most everyday things: _does she like me, how was the book you borrowed, I swear my boss just wants me to quit._

From his vantage point, Hope watched families and couples gather on the beach in New Bodhum. These fireworks were planned each summer and lasted for an entire week. The lights reflected in the ocean gorgeously, and could be seen from miles out in every direction. The anticipation was palpable, kids training their eyes on the dark sky, adults wondering out loud and checking their watches for the time when, finally, it would all begin.

He dug his fingers into the sand and concentrated on the imprint he would leave behind. The cries of children sounding around him - _Daddy could I get on your shoulders no I don't wanna go to the washroom hey are you listening to me_ - were awfully hard to ignore. He smoothed the edges of his handprint, the wet sand holding well. Biding his time.

The first blast was met with awed exclaimations. He watched it die and be followed by a triplet of sparkling flowers. It was quiet now. Even the music had been turned down in deference to this.

There was something about fireworks. No matter how many times you watched, they were ever beautiful, and ever accompanied by stunned and blissful silence. They helped him hear what was important. He shut his eyes.

Vanille's gentle soprano. _You promised me we'd come and see Gran Pulse together._

The faraway popping of another round of fireworks.

Light's determined alto. _You'll be okay. I'll keep you safe.  
><em>

He opened his eyes to the blooming of a giant chrysanthemum. Ethereal, it faded just as fast. He had to keep coming in order to keep remembering. He couldn't forget.

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><p>3. MEAL<p>

Old habits died hard, so it was with great ease that Hope turned down a visit from Serah and her accompanying offer of chicken soup. The tiniest twinge of guilt made itself known at her dejected voice over the phone, but he knew it was better for both of them that she didn't come. She didn't need to constantly be bringing him meals, and he didn't need to reassure her that there were enough blankets draped over his sickly form. It was better that they both keep to themselves.

He called in sick to work for the first time ever in the four years he'd been working at the Academy. He hit the touchpad of his thermostat and raised the temperature of the room about 5 degrees, then grabbed the tissue box before collapsing on the couch. He settled into the comforter he'd taken from his bed, wrapping it tight around his neck. His hands sprung out from the sole opening when he blew his nose. Couldn't smell a thing. His eyes were trained on the television, not absorbing the cooking show in front of him. Couldn't taste a thing.

He thought back to when he was a l'Cie. Everything tasted too good when you were starving all the time. (The terrible slop Snow cooked still tasted bad though.) He remembered eating one meal a day, hearing - and trying to ignore - the grumble of everyone's stomachs. He remembered reaching into fridges that weren't his and stealing anything artificially sweet. He remembered drinking boiled lake water and the smell of a roasting carcass. Fang and Sazh were surprisingly the best cooks. Lightning was surprisingly just as bad as Snow. (Her lack of skill was only known to him though, revealed in the early days when it was just the two of them.) Hope himself improved quickly, as the learning curve was steep. And Vanille would just smile and run off to gather herbs for seasoning.

There was something about sitting all around a communal meal. The mood was chatty if they knew they were in safe hands (Fang's, Sazh's or Hope's) or tense if they knew they were about to be endangered (Snow). But the important thing was that it was shared. It didn't matter if they were in a scrapyard or camping beneath the stars. Food tasted richer. _Better_.

Hope didn't taste much in his food anymore. And it wasn't because he was sick.

He grabbed the remote, turned the television off, and fell asleep on the couch.

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><p>4. CAMERA<p>

Years ago, Hope and his mother visited Bodhum, and then were swept away in all the chaos of the Purge. They had to forfeit many of their belongings at the command of the soldiers, and though Hope was grateful that he had managed to save his boomerang, he wished he had kept his camera.

It was small, and the perfect olive green. There were only a few pictures on it - mostly of the beach and the fireworks. It was new, and it was a gift from his father, a consolation for not being able to go to Bodhum with them. He bit his lip when he handed it over to the officer and watched it land in a heap of other electronics.

Then there was the raid by NORA, and the officers were all lying on the ground groaning, and they were whisked away before they could think. He hadn't even given the camera a second thought.

Now, as he ate breakfast in his kitchen and stared at his one photo - his mother - he thought about that camera. If he had it, would he have had the foresight to take photos of his travels, of his companions? Maybe not - he had been reeling from becoming a l'Cie and consumed with revenge plots against Snow. But later - when they had smoothed everything over - maybe then.

He shut his eyes to the photo of his mother and summoned Vanille to mind. Her exquisitely straight nose, her light green eyes framed in dark lashes, her red curled hair parted into pigtails. Even if he did this everyday, her face had become less clear over time. He was only sure of Fang's semi-permanent smirk and the smooth planes of her cheeks. He couldn't even remember the design of her tattoo. But then, Fang lived through her movement. The bent of her body as she took a hit, the angle of her arms as she launched an enemy, were as clear to him as the bowl in his hands. They were their own snapshots in his mind.

His memories of Light were different. He remembered that her eyes were the clearest blue, that her hair lay loosely curled over her collarbone. He saw her legs twirling in the air as she leapt up a canyon, and her arms tensing under the collapsing mechanism of her gunblade. But there were other things, things that no one else had a claim to. He remembered her embracing him, and his face buried in her chest like he was a child - and he was one then, wasn't he? He remembered her standing over the Nutriculture complex, coming to her own revelations. She was so relaxed then, and her voice gentle. It was these moments that he wished he had on film.

He roused himself - couldn't be late for work. He put his bowl in the sink and ran a gloved hand over his tie. Then he pulled open his apartment door and left, all those blank walls behind him.

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><p>5. GLOVES<p>

"Yeowch," came the curse from across the table. Hope just took his own cup in hand and sipped the steaming beverage easily to mock his companion.

Sazh pointed in Hope's direction in just the way parents told children not to point. "Now that's not fair. You've got your gloves on."

Hope shrugged and nodded. It was true. Sazh tried to sneer at Hope's blase attitude, but had never excelled at being spiteful and ended up bashfully scratching the back of his neck instead.

Upon setting his cup down, Hope examined the gloves in question. He just may have to replace them soon - they were soft from years of wear and tear. They were the closest make he could find to the ones he'd worn as a fourteen year-old, dark gray backs and light gray palms. They were creased on the inside of his knuckles, the fabric fitting perfectly for his boomerang. He kept his gloves on at all times, except for when he slept, showered or was preparing food. The truth was that when he wasn't wearing them he felt vulnerable, naked. The steel of a countertop in the morning was too cold without them, the china of a cup too hot. It was better that the thin hide of his gloves stood between him and the world. He didn't need or want to feel things too deeply - anymore, at least. He was still recovering from the last time.

Hope woke from his daze to the sight of Sazh forking pancake into his mouth. Once he swallowed, he spoke. "Take those damn things off, boy. This is a meal with an old friend."

He pulled at the wrist of his right glove. Too defiant and too ashamed, he said, "I'm not sure I can."

Sazh fixed him with a stern look. He waggled his fork. "Look, here. I've been wanting to say this to you for awhile."

Hope couldn't look.

"Being alive doesn't mean that you're living," Sazh spoke. The words rolled off his tongue naturally, this bit of philisophical advice sounding neither cheesy or overdone. "You've got to start living again."

Hope kept his eyes on his lap and tugged at his glove again. He couldn't. Not until they came back. Not yet.


End file.
